


Beginning of a Family and a Curse

by StellarOwl



Series: Manhunt Swap AU [1]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Gen, I'm making this AU a series, It'll make sense eventually, SBI + Tubbo are the hunters, Techno is the runner, Tubbo's actually a good fighter in this one because he's swapped with Purpled in this AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29541990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarOwl/pseuds/StellarOwl
Summary: Techno has been on the run ever since he stole a powerful magical artifact when he was 12. The Chat has always kept him one step ahead of whoever's chasing him, and the magic sword has always given him an edge in battle. Now though, he's picked up two more pursuers, the Chat's shouting about "family dynamics", and the sword is starting to sound very bloodthirsty. (Or: AU where Techno's the Manhunt speedrunner instead of Dream)
Relationships: Tubbo & Sleepy Bois Inc, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Series: Manhunt Swap AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2170374
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A kid steals a thing. This turns out to be a bigger deal than expected.

Techno liked to say he'd been a hardened criminal since he was nine years old. That wasn't true, he'd been a pretty squishy criminal when he was nine, actually, but he'd gotten better. Now he was twelve years old and could beat up most kids bigger than him, although he never got out totally unscathed, so he still avoided fights when he could. Obviously. He was smart.

He stole things a lot. Wasn't much else to do if he wanted to eat, aside from getting a job as a farmhand or entering a fighting tournament. Farming sounded boring, and tournaments required an entry fee, so that was out. He was pretty good at stealing by now. But he wanted to move up a little. If he could steal something valuable, he could sell it and get money. Then he could enter the tournaments and buy some extra food with the change. Outstanding move.

There was a museum closer to the center of the city. He rarely went indoors, but it would be worth it to find something expensive to sell. There were redstone traps, he noticed. He wasn't an expert, but they looked easy enough to get past if one knew where they were. He stepped over a few tripwires and a pressure plate. The glass would be the tricky part, someone might be able to hear him breaking it. But he couldn't tell how to lift the glass without breaking it, so he'd just have to be quick and decisive.

Quick and decisive... that was turning out to be tricky with so many cool things. Techno shook himself. _I'm not going to keep anything! I'm just gonna sell it as soon as I get out. It doesn't matter what I take._

But against his own reasoning, he walked over to the sword across the room rather than the diamond necklace right next to him. He hefted a rock he had grabbed from outside for this express purpose, and smashed the glass in. The sword was a little big for him, which he had already known but still disappointed him. _It doesn't need to be my size,_ he argued with himself. _I'm not going to use it._ He dragged the weapon along with him as he left the building, and everything was going smoothly, until the tip of the sword touched one of the tripwires. Noteblock alarms sounded. Iron boots collided with the streets.

Techno ran. It was difficult, carrying the sword and running at the same time, but he managed. He hardly paid attention to where he was going, except away from the sounds of armor and the alarms. He made a mistake and wound up in a dead-end. One of the guards caught up with him. _Looks like I will be using it,_ he thought, and swung the blade at the guard.

There was no way it should have worked out the way it did. He knew how to fight with his fists, and with broken poles and other such pieces of trash he found. He did not know how to fight with swords. He swung the sword like a club, which he knew was almost definitely not how it was meant to be used, and the blade hit perfectly between the guard's helmet and chestplate and _kept going_ , cutting the guard's head clean off. There was no way that should have happened. It shouldn't have been that easy. No way it should have been that easy to kill someone.

He had killed someone.

Techno ran, and kept running.

* * *

He was somewhere in his teens (he didn't really keep track anymore) when he discovered that a good portion of the words in his brain weren't his. He wasn't sure how long this had been going on. But they were there, and they weren't him. It scared him at first, but with nobody else to talk to, to figure things out, he tried talking to them. It was hard to get any sort of straight answer with how they were always talking over each other, but he learned that they called themselves "Chat" and they were disembodied creatures looking to watch "anything cool". He wasn't sure how comfortable he felt with that, but he was kind of flattered that they found him worth watching. Maybe it was a bit like having an audience, like the tournament fighters. Yeah. He could work with that.

* * *

It occurred to him one day how strange it was that the museum would still be sending people after him, after all these years. And after he'd covered such a distance, too. (He must have gone pretty far, hadn't he? He was good with directions, right?) Maybe the blade was even more valuable than he'd thought. Or maybe, he realized, it wasn't about the blade anymore. Maybe it was about pride or honor. Or revenge or justice, he admitted. He _had_ killed all the hunters they'd sent after him so far. ~~Why didn't he just give the sword back?~~ And maybe they weren't even related to the museum. Maybe others had heard of him by now, and he was wanted on a national scale.

Pretty worrying. But also k **ind of cool to be that infamous.**

"Shut up," he told chat. "It's not cool."

_-Technorude-_


	2. A Day in the Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Techno's just having a normal day, trying to stay alive and not get caught.

Techno was running. He was always running, that was no surprise. It was, however, a bit of a disappointment. He’d thought the pig mask he’d stolen from the actors in the town square would be enough to disguise his identity, but apparently it took more than that to fool two of the greatest hunters in the land. Especially Philza, Philza was part hawk or something, probably had perfect eyesight and a perfect sense of smell. At least he didn’t have wings or something, then Techno would really have been doomed.

And then there were the other two, the new additions. The reasons why he regretted going somewhere as public as a town square. Alright, so the theater kid never really tried to attack him outright, opting instead to just occasionally hang out with the hunters and say very cursed things. His little brother, on the other hand… that kid was feral. There were few times that seeing the blond kid rushing at him like a maniac didn’t startle him. He really shouldn’t have gone into the town square. Shouldn’t have gone into town at all, actually. Could’ve at least grabbed a better disguise than a mask that only covered his eyes.

_-Technodumb-_

_Shut up._ The chat wasn’t making things much easier, either. One would think being friends with a bunch of disembodied voices that could go anywhere they wanted and spy on your enemies for you would be a great thing, and usually it was. Really helpful actually. But that was only when they weren’t all yelling over each other. He couldn’t understand a thing they were saying if more than a few tried to speak at a time, and they were _always_ trying to speak. Maybe, because they were just voices, they were afraid that they’d disappear if they stopped.

Well, there would be time to feel bad for them when this was over. When he finally learned how to put together a good disguise. When whatever museum he’d stolen from back then had decided that getting the Blade back wasn’t worth the resources. Whenever he managed to kill the guys that always ended up chasing him, no matter where he went. The only reason he hadn’t killed them already was because there was no way he could take on Philza and Tubbo at the same time. ~~That really wasn’t the only reason.~~

_-Technosoft?_

_Shut up. It is the only reason. Even if Tubbo’s a… a kid, he’s still a hardened assassin, it would be a fair fight if we went one-on-one. Go check up on the newbies, will you?_

The noise in his head lessened as a few members of his ever-present chorus flew off to check on the newer hunters. It didn't take long for them to report back.

_-Log Cult-_

_-Logs-_

_-Tall bois got log cult-_

_-theater kid has started a cult-_

_-told you before, their names are Wilbur and Tommy-_

_-Wlibr has started a cult. Tomy fllow him-_

It was a mystery to Techno how they could misspell something out loud like that. But maybe he just wasn't hearing them properly. "Alright, what does this 'log cult' entail exactly?" Techno asked as he ducked behind a tree and dug himself into a little hole.

_-logs-_

"Thanks for that, very helpful." Techno grumbled. "Well, as long as they're occupied with that, probably won't be seeing them for a while. Go keep an eye on Tubbo and Phil." He dug down a little further and then started tunneling, trying to get farther away from where he'd disappeared. Once he'd gotten a good enough distance, about 20 blocks by his estimation, he started digging straight down.

_-don't dig straight down-_

_-lol noob-_

"That's only if you're doing it wrong," Techno said, rolling his eyes. He demonstrated for the chorus how he cut footholds into the stone so that he wouldn't fall into pits of lava. Eventually, as he'd hoped, he found a cave system. Lots of easy iron there. He could finally get a new helmet, his current helmet was getting pretty beat up. Of course, smelting takes time, and he wasn't sure if he had that. Chat didn't seem particularly alarmed though, so he figured he was safe enough for the time being.

The iron was done smelting. Techno broke the furnace and scooped it up into his inventory along with the ingots (can't leave evidence) and started running again, this time further into the cave. He didn't place any torches. He didn't need to, he could take on any monsters that challenged him. Maybe he even wa **nted to fight them.**

 _...Huh. Well, that's a little off-topic. I don't want to fight the monsters- I mean, I do, but given the choice between that and avoiding the hunters, I'd stay away._ Even so, he went further into the cave, a tight grip on the handle of his sword. The Blade.

_-That's a little unsettling-_

"Oh, what do you know?" Techno complained out loud.

_**Kill them already**_

"I'm already doing that," he answered, leaping at a zombie. "Man, you guys are impatient!"

_-don't think that was-_

_-EEEE-_

_-Zombie is gone. Crab rave-_

Techno didn't remember all that had happened in the past few minutes, but he could be fairly certain that he had been hunting monsters, and very successfully, from the gore on his clothes and the loot in his inventory. It was a shame he apparently hadn't killed any endermen; the pearls would have been nice to have.

"Chat? You guys remember wha-" he stopped for a moment, not wanting them to think he was crazy. _Ha, not wanting the voices in my head to think I'm crazy,_ he mused. _Irony._ But they were different, he had proven that they were real. They could tell him what the hunters were doing, when he wasn't looking.

Well, either way. Better to use all the resources he had to his advantage than worry about being judged by the disembodied people that judged him all the time anyway.

"Do you remember what happened these past few minutes? I... kinda zoned out. I killed monsters, right? Is that all that happened?"

_-TechnoBlade-_

_-Blood for the Blood God-_

_-blood god-_

_-sword-_

_-blood for the blood god-_

_-shouted a lot-_

_-Philza's catching up-_

He wasn't sure what that stuff about a 'blood god' meant, and he didn't think he'd be getting a particularly thorough explanation anytime soon, but if Philza was catching up, then he needed to move. He switched his sword out for a pickaxe and started digging towards the surface, filling the tunnel behind him.


End file.
